US election: 'When your name is Barack Hussein Obama, getting elected is difficult'

Prejudice among some American voters will make it difficult for President
Barack Obama to win re-election, he has suggested.

The remarks were made on ABC's The ViewPhoto: AFP/GETTY

By Jon Swaine, Washington

7:57PM BST 15 May 2012

Asked during a television interview how close he expected the result of November's presidential election to be, Mr Obama said: "When your name is Barack Obama, it's always tight".

After a host noted that his full name was "Barack Hussein Obama," he repeated this twice, stressing the middle name that has led conspiracy theorists to claim erroneously that he is secretly Muslim.

The remarks, made on ABC's The View, appeared to be a rare admission by Mr Obama that four years after he became the first black US president, his ethnicity continues to repel some American voters.

Asked "why do you say that now, after four years?" Mr Obama appeared to gather his thoughts and said: "I think it's going to be tight because the fact of the matter is, the country has gone through a very difficult time – the worst financial crisis, the worst economic crisis, since the 1930s."

A White House spokesman declined to comment on whether Mr Obama had been referring to voter prejudice. A spokesman for Mr Obama's re-election campaign did not return a request for comment.

A CBS News/New York Times poll on Tuesday indicated that Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, had overtaken Mr Obama and now led by 46 per cent to 43. Last month the same poll put the pair in a dead heat.

The President covered several other topics on the programme, comparable to Britain's 'Loose Women', whose hosts include the actress Whoopi Goldberg and the veteran broadcaster Barbara Walters.

He defended JP Morgan after its recent $2 billion trading loss, saying it was "one of the best managed banks there is" and that "Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we've got".

Following his announcement that he now supports same-sex marriage, Mr Obama said Congress was "on notice" that he believed the Defence of Marriage Act, which allows states to ignore gay marriages carried out elsewhere, was unconstitutional. The remark raised hopes among liberal activists that Democrats may attempt to overturn the Act in a second Obama term.